


Out Here in the Fields

by honeylocusttree



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Abuse, Bugs, Captivity, Child Abuse, Drama, Gen, Gore, Hallucinations, Mental Illness, Psychosis, Serial Killer Dean, Serial Killer Sam, Violence, disturbing imagery, human degradation, non-supernatural horror, serial killer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-04
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 03:30:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/208286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeylocusttree/pseuds/honeylocusttree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchesters are two of the most dangerous serial killers ever known. Henriksen’s job is to bring them in. But things don’t always go to plan.</p><p>PLEASE NOTE WARNINGS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Since I came to SPN late, I missed out on a lot of great characters who were killed off. Henriksen is easily one of my top three favorite dead guys, and I just really wanted to write something with him in it. This has been sitting on my hard drive for weeks and I kept forgetting about it, so I've cleaned it up a bit and tried to make it presentable._

_I don't need to fight  
to prove I'm right  
I don't need to be forgiven  
__

-1-

Victor doesn't like it here. He sits, elbows on his knees, hands clasped in front of his face, and glares indiscriminately at the room. He's been here for a while, sitting nearly motionless as the sun slides down the sky and the light dims. Long shadows crawl over everything, darkening the blood on the walls, stretching up to meet the rust-brown spray across the ceiling.

Victor's fingers tighten, just slightly.

There's blood on the ceiling.

He'd overheard, hours ago, the local PD muttering about monsters and butchery, and knew better than to hold it against them. Things like this were not supposed to happen. Even people who saw ugliness and catastrophe every day of their lives couldn't be confronted with something like _this_ and be expected to deal without going a little overboard on the metaphors. Despite the opinions of some, Victor _is_ capable of letting things slide. Once in a while.

The muttering had been going on at about the same time that someone else was being noisily sick around the side of the house. Victor knew better than to draw attention to _that_ , either.

Reidy had been angry. Quietly so, and not at anyone in particular. He'd just stood in the center of the room, in the middle of the crowd of officers and analysts, surrounded by horror, and very slowly opened and closed his hands. Everyone else moved around him, casting sidelong glances.

"He's getting worse," Reidy had said later, when they were standing outside and a little downwind, away from the _smell_.

"You listen to me," Victor ground out, voice so low it should have been inaudible over the general noise, "We're bringing this bastard in. _You hear me?_ "

Reidy was angry, but Victor had moved past anger a long time ago.

His partner met his eyes, and nodded.

Now, Victor sits alone in the empty, blood-ruined house. Forensics is gone, local PD is gone, Reidy is gone. It's just Victor, and the total obliteration of a human being Dean Winchester has left behind.

He has to catch this son of a bitch.

When his phone rings he eases himself upright, joints popping and muscles protesting. He's been here far too long. He goes outside and ducks under the yellow tape. It's Reidy on the other end.

He listens for a moment, and then grins into the fading light.

* * *

Victor knows a lot about Dean Winchester. He damn well wishes he didn't. He knows Reidy feels pretty much the same way. Winchester's file is a horror-show that crosses decades and state lines and undermines faith in humanity—even the tiny faiths people like Victor and Reidy nurture in small, tucked-away corners of their souls. Dean Winchester is twenty-seven years old, hideously charming, offensively handsome, and completely psychotic. He's not a sociopath and he _is_ capable of forming human connections, albeit rarely, and never in a remotely healthy way. He has one immediate family member, his brother Sam Winchester. Their father and mother are deceased. The relationship between Sam and Dean is complicated at best and also, Victor knows, the key to understanding everything about both Winchesters.

They picked up Sam nearly by accident, spotted outside a Circle K by an off-duty officer, hauled in with far less fuss than anyone expected, thanks to a little fancy footwork and a couple of unmarked cars. They left his coffee in a puddle in the motel parking lot, but brought along the sack of jerky and M&Ms he'd dropped in his surprise. Dean, not surprisingly, was nowhere to be found.

When Victor rolled into the station, Reidy was wearing that grim little smile of his, the smug bastard. At this point, though, Victor's willing to forgive the man pretty much anything.

Sam motherfucking Winchester.

Yes.

Victor knows a lot of people look at Sam and immediately experience some serious cognitive dissonance. He gets it—it's tough for them to reconcile his height, his sheer _mass_ , with his face of angelic, slightly wounded innocence. In his mug shot from Maryland, he looks like nothing so much as a frat kid picked up for drunk driving, waiting on his Daddy to come bail him out.

A lot of people have glanced at Sam, seen the broad shoulders and large hands and the beat-to-shit clothing, and concluded that the soft eyes and compassionate smile are nothing but a mask. Debra, Victor's current protégé, had argued sometime last year that _Sam_ is a sociopath, that he might even be manipulating his brother, that all of Dean's crimes are nothing more than a way for Sam to keep score. Victor considered that for a while, but then he had the opportunity to read through some interviews and talk to some of his old Stanford classmates.

Victor knows that Sam isn't a sociopath. Knows that it would be a mistake to dismiss him as such. And he knows that the gentleness is real.

Right up to the moment when it isn't.

"Hi, Sam." He eases himself into the chair across from the larger man and flicks a quick glance over his uncuffed hand, resting loosely on the tabletop, and his arms and shoulders, a little tight with tension, before coming to rest on his face. Sam gazes back mournfully. His eyes are huge.

He says, "Oh," very quietly.

Victor lets a small chuckle pass his lips. Makes it rueful, self-deprecating.

"So let's take a look at what we got here." He lays the file folder on the table and Sam's lips tighten, barely. A flinch, almost. He probably has a pretty good idea what's in there.

"You know we're not all that interested in you, Sam," Victor tells him, tone light. He's doing his best to avoid condescension. He thinks about Sunday afternoons, relaxing on the back porch, shooting the shit. Just two guys hanging out in the warm summer sun. Feeds it right into his language, his posture, his tone of voice.

"I know," Sam murmurs.

"This is your file here," he taps the folder with his middle and ring fingers. "And _this one_ ," he lays another fat folder side-by-side with Sam's, "belongs to your brother."

It's a risk, bringing Dean into it this early. Victor debated for a while with Reidy about it, in quiet voices halfway down the hall while Sam stewed alone in the interview room. Neither one of them is sure that this is the best way to approach the situation. Sam is unpredictable. Sam might react to a mention of his brother by clamming up, or lashing out. Victor is hoping, and Reidy had grudgingly allowed for the possibility, that it might allow him to form a connection with the younger man. Draw him out a little.

He's still not really sure how he wants to play this. God knows how Sam will react to an ostensibly friendly voice. The kid's not a moron.

"Listen," Sam says, leaning forward a little in his chair, brow furrowing earnestly, "I know you don't believe me, but Dean isn't—he's not. Hurting people. He's not a killer. Not a monster. He's _not_."

"Oh really?" Victor splays a hand over the folder. "So this is full of what, exactly? Copies of my unfinished screenplay? I _know_ you know better."

"That's not—" Sam leans back, blows a frustrated breath. "No. You're wrong. Okay? All of it. Everything in there."

Victor raises an eyebrow. "Lotta people worked a long time to put this together, Sam." He leaves the sentence in the air between them.

"It's wrong," Sam reiterates quietly. "You're _wrong_."

Victor purses his lips a little, then pushes Sam's file to one side, and carefully opens Dean's. He shuffles through some of the more recent reports, laying aside photos, ignoring the way Sam's eyes track his meticulous movements. Victor knows that Sam is the sort of person who can appreciate meticulousness.

He shifts in his chair a little when Victor withdraws two Polaroids from about halfway down the pile and sets them out carefully on the table, turned so that Sam can see them both. The other man lets out a little puff of air.

"If I'm so wrong," Victor tells him, voice serious as he can make it. "You explain this to me."

Sam blinks rapidly. The skin around his mouth tightens, just a little. He looks very young. Victor just watches.

"It was an accident," is what Sam says, finally, when several long and heavy moments have gone by. "We were trying to _help._ "

Victor nods. It's what he's been hoping to hear. "You know what, Sam?" he meets the other man's gaze and gives him the barest nod, catches the flicker of confusion in his hazel eyes. "I believe you."

The thing is, Victor does.

Sam says, "It was _in_ her."

He reaches out a hand, halfway, hesitates and shoots a glance at Victor, then lightly touches one of the Polaroids. Slides it across the table, peers down at the glossy surface.

Victor almost opens his mouth, almost prompts him. Something like _there was a lot of blood,_ or, _what, exactly was 'in her'?_ But he wants inside Sam's head. Not what's on the surface. He keeps his mouth shut and watches Sam stare down at the pictures, the splashes of red, the flashes of skin. Sam's face crumples a little, before he manages to smooth it out.

"Look," he says softly, "It seems bad, I know. But Dean—he doesn't _hurt_ people, okay? Not like that. Not _people_. Sometimes…I guess it gets a little messy, but that's—those are just accidents."

"'Accidents,'" Victor repeats, knows he hasn't managed to completely keep the incredulity out of his voice. Sam narrows his eyes.

"Do you _know_ what's out there?" he very nearly demands. Victor shrugs. It's still light, still easy. Sure, he's not buying what Sam's selling, but maybe he could be convinced. The right words could convince him.

"I know some things."

Sam opens and shuts his mouth, seems to think better of whatever he's about to say. Shakes his head so his hair falls across his face. He folds in on himself and the incongruity of it is startling. This is _little Sammy,_ and God help them both because it's not a smokescreen or some kind of act.

Victor resists the urge to sigh.

"He's not evil. _We're_ not. We're not the bad guys here. Why won't you see that?"

"Dean's going to be worrying about you," Victor tells him, and Sam's eyes flicker, between the table and the photographs and, very briefly, Victor's face. His breath quickens.

"He's already left town. You won't find him. You _won't._ "

"Maybe." Victor folds his hands atop Sam's file. "Something tells me he's not going far as long as he knows you're in custody. And he _knows,_ Sam. We've made sure of that. You think he won't come back for you?"

"He's not—he won't—"

"Our boy's not an idiot. I know. But I think…maybe this time his good sense might take a back seat to the fact that _his brother's in custody._ What do you think, Sam? Is he gonna walk away? Leave you to rot here, until we get you extradited?"

The look Sam turns on him is a little desperate, a little terrified. When he speaks, his voice breaks, and both of them know that the word is a lie.

" _Yes."_

* * *

Victor would be the first to admit he isn't a real imaginative guy. It comes with the territory-suit, tie, shoulder holster, humorless demeanor and total lack of imagination. Diligence and stolid patience, and the ability to mainline caffeine on a handful of hours of sleep without lapsing into a waking coma, are Victor's strongest character traits. He has people like Debra around for sudden flights of fancy and occasional flashes of brilliance that can nudge a faltering investigation onto a new track.

There are moments, though, where Victor finds himself confronted with a mental image so powerful it's almost tangible. Hunting the Winchesters has led to more than one flash of something very near a waking dream when he shuts his eyes. He can't picture them as anything but a pair, shoulder to shoulder in some Midwestern city, calm and terrifyingly aware in the midst of a crowd of distracted, noisy people. The Winchesters don't even _walk_ like other people, turned in on themselves, a constant mantra of appointments and bills and meetings and errands and Things To Do bouncing around their skulls. Sam and Dean move through space wholly aware of the world, of the presence of every body, of every man, woman and child. Every person is observed, catalogued, assessed. Every last one a possible target.

The whole thing is ridiculously melodramatic. Victor mentally sneers at himself. He'd say it's the result of too much TV, if he ever had time to watch TV.

He's sitting in the room he and Reidy have commandeered on the second floor, rearranging the most recent data on Dean. There's not much that's new. A few school transcripts, a hospital record from Pontiac, dated to 1995 (concussion, three fractured ribs—overzealous tackle in a football game, apparently), two eyewitness interviews from the motel.

He looks up when Reidy strolls into the room, looking as fresh as a man reasonably can at eleven-thirty at night. The fluorescent lights don't do anything for his complexion but he won't appreciate Victor telling him that. He leans against the desk and Victor holds up a hand because he already knows what's coming, but that doesn't stop the other man.

"Take your sorry ass to bed, Vic," Reidy says, and Victor scowls.

"My sorry ass is fine right where it is," he snaps.

"I'm not gonna give you the 'you're no good to anyone as a caffeine zombie' speech," Reidy pauses, "Except that I just did. Take your ass back to the motel and go the hell to bed."

"Reidy, you know goddamn well Winchester's not sitting around out there twiddling his fucking thumbs. We locked up his _brother_ , he's not gonna be a happy camper—"

Reidy snatches up the file from Victor's desk. "Four hours. I'm not peeling you off your desk with a spatula at five o'clock tomorrow morning. _Go._ "

Reidy has a lot of fucking nerve, being right all the damn time. Victor musters up a sneer from somewhere but they both know how halfhearted it is. At this point there isn't even much sense in going off on a tirade.

"Shit," he grumbles and Reidy snorts, which is as close to a grin as he ever gets.

* * *

-2-

* * *

The psychiatrist is pretty, and brunette, and Victor's thinking he should be ashamed of himself for bringing her into this room. But he's not, even a little, and that fact probably has a lot to do with why his last marriage didn't make it past their second anniversary.

Bethany Galo is tough, though. Not that Victor really wants to think of what might happen if she found herself in Sam Winchester's sights. She might be a fierce little thing when it comes to facing down thugs with mommy issues and the occasional underachieving sociopath, but she probably weighs about as much as Sam's left forearm. Sticking her in front of him is both dangerous and probably a little stupid, but he's got to try every trick. He's still got a conscience, shriveled as it may be, and if there's a _chance_ of getting Dean in off the streets, he's got to take it.

She toys with her hair and smiles that lip-gloss smile and Sam is sullen and flustered, completely at sea. He's fixed his eyes on the photographs of the dead girl.

Galo says, "It's been two days."

"Then he's two states away by now," Sam answers dully.

"I doubt that very much." Her voice is soft. He flicks a glance at her and she smiles.

"Sam." Gently.

"You're not going to find him." His voice trembles, barely.

"And what if you're wrong? What if we do? What then? You think he'll come along quietly?"

"If we get him in alive," Victor murmurs, and Sam's shoulders stiffen.

"He'll come for you," Galo offers, and Sam shuts his eyes.

She says, "He's a good brother. He won't leave you here."

"He's Dean," Sam says, opening his eyes, staring down at the table. Victor resists the urge to bare his teeth.

"He's very important to you," Galo observes, as if she's agreeing with him and not laying something new on the table. "He looks out for you."

"He's my brother," he answers, in the same tone as before.

"He looks out for you."

He lifts his eyes and meets her gaze.

"He did a lot," he says, softly, "He always has. For me, I mean. He looks out for me. He—he takes care of me."

 _I'll bet he does,_ Victor's brain supplies, but he knows better than to open his mouth.

"Dean's looked after you for a long time." Galo's voice is low, smooth, almost sonorous. Victor doesn't grin.

"He—" Sam breaks off. "He always got in the way. Y'know? He put himself in the way. Of everything."

"He was protecting you."

"Yeah," Sam breathes.

"He got in the way."

"Dad used to tie him in the bathroom and leave him."

All Victor's skin prickles, sudden and cold. Sam's facing the doctor but his eyes have lost a little of their focus. Victor doesn't dare to move.

Galo says, "He left him?"

"He left us alone." Sam's voice is taking on a strange, lilting quality. Almost singsong. "He'd go for days, leave Dean tied up, I…I wasn't supposed to touch him."

"Did you do what you were told, Sam?"

His smile is empty, vague.

"I used to bring him water," he whispers. "And food."

This is a terrible secret, Victor realizes. It's something Sam's never told anyone.

He shoots a glance at the doctor. She keeps her gaze locked on the man across the table.

The boy, really.

"Dad found out one day," Sam goes on, left hand flexing slightly against the table, fingertips making slow strange motions against its surface. "He was _so_ …and Dean had pissed himself, of course. Three days tied to a sink, no one can…." He trails off and looks down at his fingers and smiles again, makes a little noise that Victor realizes belatedly is a laugh.

"People get hurt, people get _hurt_ , and sometimes you can't stop it. Sometimes you just _can't._ " Sam squeezes his hand on the table, nails scraping on steel. "But you have to try, don't you? You _have to._ "

Victor hesitates, afraid to speak and break Sam out of the near-trance he's retreated into. _This is what we're dealing with_ , he thinks. _This is what they are._ _Children. They're like children._ Never socialized, never really growing up. Broken down into monsters. They'd never be able to be anything else.

He needs Sam to tell him about Dean. Christ. They've got to get him off the streets. Bury them both in deep dark holes for the rest of their goddamn lives.

"I was the one who killed him," Sam says, voice quiet and small. Galo doesn't ask who _he_ is. "I got him out back and I hit him and _hit him._ I was bigger than him. I was _bigger._ And Dean wouldn't. He wouldn't do it. Twenty-one years old and he wouldn't fucking _make him stop._ " And he makes a fist, right there on the table.

He beat his father to death when he was seventeen years old.

Jesus fuck.

"You have to protect people who can't take care of themselves." Sam raises his head, looks right in the doctor's face. He sounds proud, now. He sounds like a five-year-old stating the utter certainty of the things he knows to be true.

She says, "Sometimes people have to be allowed to help themselves."

"Sometimes they _can't_ ," Sam shoots back.

Victor stirs, slides a hand forward, taps the photos. The doctor breaks Sam's gaze. Victor doesn't want to think that she might be unnerved.

"By the time we got to Heather," Victor says, "most of her skin had been peeled off."

Sam narrows his eyes. His voice is low, intense.

"She had a _monster_ in her. _Under_ her _skin._ " He leans back. "And she ran, you know. Through the house. I was outside and caught her coming through a window." His lips twitch, just slightly.

Victor can picture it clearly. The woman running through the dark house, tripping over familiar objects. Crawling through the downstairs window, straight into the embrace of Sam Winchester. She wouldn't have been able to scream—Sam's hands are big enough to have covered her entire face.

Dean was inside, waiting.

 _Shit._

"So what should I do, then, Sam?" He reaches for the nearest photo, slides it closer to the file. "Just…call off the investigation? Chase some jaywalkers off the streets? Catch those guys swiping office supplies at Quantico?"

"Dean's not a _monster,_ " Sam spits.

"You took that girl's skin off."

"And I'd do it again!" Sam's free hand bangs down on the table. Galo flinches, barely. "You think it's wrong, you don't know, you _don't know._ "

He laces his fingers together. "You could explain it to me."

"My brother's not _evil._ He's not a fucking _monster._ You call him all these, these, these _things_ , they talk about him on the news, you're all so goddamn _stupid._ "

That's the thing about children. They can turn on a dime. Sammy's working his way up to a tantrum, face tight, shoulders hunching. The doctor shoots Victor a warning look.

"I've had enough of this." He slaps the file shut, grabs up the photos, ignores the way Sam's fingers curl against the table, nails scraping.

Victor half-rises from the chair, meets Sam's narrow, furious eyes.

"You kill people, Sam. You can lie to yourself all you damn well please, but it doesn't change anything. Dean's no saint, and maybe you're brainwashed—hell, maybe you both are. I don't give a damn. _You kill people._ "

"I think you should shut your mouth," Sam says softly.

"Oh, is that what you think? Maybe you think I should unlock those cuffs and drop you back in your brother's lap, too. That a good idea, Sammy?"

"It's _Sam._ "

"It's whatever the hell I say it is, kid."

Sam's nostrils flare, but he says nothing. His whole body is still, hand open flat on the table. Given half a chance, he'd be over the table introducing Victor's teeth to the back of his skull.

He's not going to get that chance.

"We're done here," Victor says, turning away but letting the doctor move in front of him toward the door. At his back, Sam is a cold, silent wall.

He shuts the door quietly. Sam doesn't say a word.

* * *


	2. 2/2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Warnings:** Disturbing imagery, CHILD ABUSE, gore, violence, captivity, hallucinations, bugs, human degradation, language, etc.

**Out Here in the Fields 2/2**

**Summary:** The Winchesters are two of the most dangerous serial killers ever known. Henriksen’s job is to bring them in. But things don’t always go to plan.  
 **Spoilers:** Victor/FBI-related plot points.

 **Warnings:** Disturbing imagery, CHILD ABUSE, gore, violence, captivity, hallucinations, bugs, human degradation, language, etc. 

—

_The exodus is here The happy ones are near_

______________

-3-

______________

They wait, and wait, and wait some more. After that, just for a change of pace, they wait. 

The capture of Sam Winchester is all over the news, because that’s where they keep it. Victor sits in his motel room with his hand clasped under his chin, bathed in the radiance of the television set, watching himself perform at press conferences. He thinks idly that he could stand to hit the gym when this is all over. Assuming it’s ever over. 

Dean is still in town, they think. There’s no solid evidence to support the supposition, but the constant news stories, the endlessly recycled images of the younger Winchester’s huge form crammed into an orange jumpsuit and sporting a new pair of silver bracelets, are aimed precisely at an audience of one. 

Victor has found himself in the laughable position of battling to keep Sam from being extradited to California. Nothing is quite as terrifying to his mind as the thought of a vengeful Dean Winchester following his brother across state lines. He has a dream about it. He has several, actually, mostly consisting of Victor trudging along an endless road of red wetness, through hills and valleys, along empty highways, underneath a grey and godless sky. 

He has another dream about being dragged through a wire fence, crushed and compressed through the tiny spaces between the metal mesh, until nothing is left of him but bloody chunks. He wakes up after that one and splashes cold water on his face in the motel bathroom, swears at his own reflection, and doesn’t get any more sleep that night. 

With the help of the local PD they tear apart the city and come up with bupkiss. They search motels, abandoned houses, vacant lots, burnt-out vehicles, bars, shelters, squats, and there’s nothing, nothing. They roust local villains, drug dealers and whores and homeless, and they get all sorts of useless tips and hysterical phone calls and none of it amounts to shit. When Reidy made the mistake of joking that maybe there was something to all the half-baked supernatural paraphernalia that tended to accompany the average Winchester murder scene, Victor had spent five solid minutes inventing new and creative ways to swear at his partner. 

“He’s not _magic,”_ Vic spat at Reidy, five minutes before storming out of the local station, “He’s _not_ a monster. He’s just a man!” 

And that’s the worst part. Dean Winchester is _just a man._ But they can’t catch him. So the parade of increasingly stale clips of Sam Winchester in cuffs and Victor at press conferences continue, and each day the pageant seems a little less real, and people are a little less afraid, and the chances of catching Dean before he hurts somebody are a little smaller. 

On whichever local news station is currently playing, a pretty newscaster is interviewing a thirty-ish woman, who’s saying, _“No, I’m not really scared. I mean I was and I was staying inside and everything, like the news said, but…not anymore.”_

“So you don’t think the serial killer is still in the city?” 

“I mean, yeah, of course, it’s possible. But I have to live my life, y’know?”

Victor puts his chin on his fist and with is other hand flicks through the local channels, looking for familiar flashes of orange. 

At some point he must drift off, because he comes back to himself, bleary-eyed and vague, around three in the morning. The curtains are wide open to the night, and the parking lot is brightly lit with awful whiteness. 

He gets up to yanks the curtains shut, and the lock to the door goes _click._

++

His head hurts. The sound of the lock clicking bounces around his skull, echoing and re-echoing, and he inhales a sharp breath and forces his eyes open. The light stabs across his vision and he’s blind, he’s in fucking agony, and he hears again the sound of the lock, and then the door swinging open, and he sees that smile, that broad charming smile, that familiar hated face—

The room swims into focus, patterns coalescing out of chaotic agony. Blue tiles, black mold. Yellow bathtub, peeling vinyl flooring. Cracks and dirt, dead roaches scattered artfully around. Bits of trash in the corner. 

Victor’s arms hurt and he manages, after a moment, to remember how to turn his head, tilting it back and to the left. His arms jerk involuntarily and he hears the familiar jangle of metal. 

He’s cuffed to the sink, and sitting on the floor, his legs bound neatly in front of him, cord running from his ankles to the solid anchor of the metal pipe. 

_Dad used to tie him in the bathroom and leave him._

Sam Winchester’s voice replaces the noise of the clicking lock, bouncing around in his skull. Victor swallows a groan. His legs twitch involuntarily. 

He has no way of knowing what time it is. How long he’s been gone. Does Reidy know where he is? 

He shuts his eyes and in the dark behind his eyelids Dean Winchester smiles at him from the motel room doorway, framed by terrible white lights. 

“Hi,” he says, almost sweetly. 

++

When the bathroom door lock clicks Victor’s eyes fly open and he sits up as rigidly as he can. The door opens slowly and silently, and his eyes fly to the face of the man he’s spent the last six months tracking. 

“Hi,” Dean says, and gives a little wave. 

“They’ll find me,” Victor says immediately. 

Dean shuts the door behind himself and goes to sit on the edge of the old yellow bathtub, his hands folded between his knees. He gnaws briefly on his bottom lip. 

“Listen,” he says finally, “Nobody’s gonna find you.” 

He sounds almost apologetic about it. His voice is a gravelly drawl. He doesn’t look a whole lot like his brother. 

“How did you find me?” Vic asks. 

Dean says, “I’m good at this.” 

He’s not bragging. He’s very calm. He even shrugs, slightly. 

“I want my brother back,” he continues. As if he thinks Victor’s going to produce Sam right then and there. 

Victor says, “Sam’s being extradited to California.” 

Dean shrugs. “You can go to California. You’re FBI. You can get him back.” 

He sounds so calm. So certain. But there’s an undercurrent there, a fragility, that chills Victor down in his guts. And Dean’s speaking so confidently about something he doesn’t really understand. 

“It doesn’t work that way,” Victor says. “It’s—I’m not _the_ FBI. I’m just a, a grunt. I can’t stop what’s going to happen. You can’t stop what’s been started. It’s too big.” 

Quietly Dean says, “You have to.” 

“I can’t.” 

Dean stands up. He stares down at Victor and says, in a faraway voice, “You have to get him back. I can’t do this without him.” 

He’s staring over Victor’s head, at the wall, and before he can muster a response, Dean spins and just about hurls himself through the door, slamming it and throwing the lock violently. Victor’s arms clench involuntarily, making his cuffs jingle. 

Fuck. _Fuck._

++

He’s trying to dislocate his thumb. It’s harder than he’d thought it would be, and he’s mostly just succeeded in tearing the skin off the back of his hand. The pain in his head has receded some, and though he’s not capable of feeling hunger right now, he’s starting to feel the first gnawing of thirst. He wonders what would happen if he were to ask for water. 

When the door opens this time, Dean strolls in a little more casually. He’s smiling, and Victor scowls into it, furious and hating the man more than he’s hated anyone in years. 

“Sam’s getting locked up for _life,”_ he bites, jerking at the cuffs and tearing off a little more skin. Dean’s smile broadens. 

Suddenly he’s down in Victor’s face, grabbing his jaw and _squeezing,_ and his lips pull back in a rictus and he says, “I’ll skin you alive,” in a voice like nothing Vic has ever heard. 

He jerks back and Dean releases him, turns and paces a step away, running a hand down his face, over his mouth. It’s a frighteningly human gesture. Dean’s eyes are a little wider than they should be, showing the whites around the irises. 

“You have to give him back,” he says, “I can’t—I can’t do this without him.” 

“I c—”

“Do you even know what’s out there?” Dean demands. 

Victor sneers halfheartedly. “You’re gonna say monsters, aren’t you?” 

“Don’t talk about it like you understand,” Dean retorts, softly. 

“But I _do_ understand, Dean. You were brainwashed, your Daddy _brainwashed_ you and your brother, and nothing he told you was true. You’ve hurt a lot of people.” 

“No.” Dean takes a fortifying breath through his nose. “Those weren’t people.” 

Victor narrows his eyes. He’s looking for that fine fracture he’d seen in Sam, that fraction of an instant where he was pretty sure some part of Sam _knew_ that the people he’d killed were human beings, not monsters, but he doesn’t see it. 

There’s no evidence of predatory enjoyment on Dean’s face, in his voice. Just a kind of weariness, and under that, a pallid fear. 

Victor cocks his head. He says, “You know, little Sammy killed your father.” 

Dean says, “No he—it wasn’t…it wasn’t like that.” 

“That’s not what he said.” 

Dean shakes his head. “He wasn’t—”

“He said he was trying to protect you.” 

Dean sinks down slowly onto the edge of the tub. He presses his hands together, palms rubbing dryly against each other. He stares into the corner of the room, past Victor’s shoulder. 

“What did you do with the body?” Vic wonders aloud. “Did you help Sam bury him? Or did you chop him up into bits and set him on fire, like you did with the guy in Birmingham? That was a grisly one—”

Slowly, Dean’s head turns. Liquid and smooth, like his skull’s mounted on ball bearings. His eyes shift away from the wall and fix on Victor’s face. They’re flat. Victor’s never seen a face so blank. 

“You’re going to give my brother back to me,” he says hollowly. And he doesn’t say anything else. His eyes are wide, fixed open like a dead man’s. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t blink for a long time. 

When he leaves again, Victor swallows and his throat sticks together. 

++

The need for water is at war with the need to piss. Victor doesn’t know how long he’s been in this stinking roach-hole. A few hours? A day? 

_“And Dean had pissed himself, of course.”_ Sam’s voice rattles around his head. _“Three days tied to a sink, no one can…”_

It hasn’t been three days, Vic’s pretty sure. But it’s been more than a few hours. His arms have become one long steady ache. They feel swollen to twice their normal size, though they’re not. His right hand is scraped raw and already scabbed over. He needs to keep trying but it’s hard to focus past the thirst. 

Roaches come and go, occasionally. Vic catches glimpse of their little brown bodies scurrying across the tiles. Some have wings, grossly distended away from their bodies. Some are smaller than his thumbnail. 

The light is dead yellow, an awful echo of sunlight. Vic really fucking needs to piss. He shuts his eyes and leans his head briefly against the mildewed wall, and its spongy surface gives slightly under the pressure. Something skitters against his ear and he jerks away. He tries pulling his thumb out of its socket again, while his eyes fix on the door almost of their own accord. He thinks about water and then he tries not to. 

Outside there are no sounds. He doesn’t know if Winchester is around. He tries yanking on the sink, fists clenched. It doesn’t budge an inch. 

He wonders if he called, if anyone would come. 

“Fucking Reidy, come the fuck on already,” he mutters, and his voice is hoarse and scratchy. He tries swallowing and it’s more difficult than before. He licks his lips, even though he knows better. Dry. Everything is dry. 

He puts as much pressure as he can on the joint of his thumb. The pain stabs up his arm and into his shoulder. He feels a warm trickles against his leg and his gut clenches, muscles spasming automatically. He’s a grown-ass man. He’s not gonna fucking _wet himself._

The silence bears down, huge and heavy. He’s alone here. There’s no one outside. 

His arms hurt. 

He’s so thirsty. 

______________________

-4-

______________________

The silence is a blanket. His ears are ringing from it, the warm soft pressure against his head. The echoing nothingness. The air stinks of mildew and decay and it’s crawled up his nose and started excavating his head, worming through his brain. 

His mouth is open and he jerks back to something like awareness with the feeling of warm wetness spreading across his crotch. His lip curls at the stink of urine. 

Yeah. He’s pissed himself. Between that and the mold and roaches this suit is a complete fucking loss. 

He tries swallowing, experimentally. His throat feels hot. The skin of his esophagus sticks together and he nearly gags. 

He yanks on the cuff, the sharp grate of damaged skin a bolt of familiar pain. But it’s distant, muted. 

It’s possible, he reflects dully, that he’s not getting out of this. 

Outside, a door slams. Victor jerks involuntarily. Heavy footsteps cross the floor, louder than they should be. And there’s something else. Some long, scraping noise. The sound of something being dragged, perhaps. 

The sound of a body, being dragged. 

Victor clenches his teeth. 

He’s going to kill Winchester with his bare fucking hands. 

The bathroom door flies open and Dean is standing there, half a smile on his face, and he takes in the room and his gaze flickers over the puddle Vic is sitting in, and the smile spreads slightly. 

“I brought you a present,” he says crisply, and with one hand he drags the body of a woman into the room. 

Victor hisses and jerks his legs. 

“You fucking—”

“Shh.” Dean reaches across and casually belts him across the face. “It’s okay. You need this. You need to see this.” 

“Need to see you in a _cage,_ where you belong—”

“You know,” Dean says conversationally, “If my Dad was here he’d beat the holy hell out of you for that.” He nods at the puddle of urine, and grins. “You’re lucky he ain’t here.” 

“Feel real fuckin’ lucky,” Vic mutters. He stares at the woman Dean’s dragged into the bathroom. She’s like a doll, legs flopping around, head lolling. He can’t tell if she’s alive or dead. “You’re gonna be in a deep dark hole the rest of your goddamn life.” 

“No I’m not,” Dean returns, grabbing the woman’s arms and winding a cord around her wrists. “’Cuz you’re gonna see the truth. You’re gonna _know.”_

A noise dribbles out of the woman’s mouth, and Victor’s stomach drops. He says, “She’s alive.” 

Dean nods absently as he binds her wrists together. “It is. For now.” 

Fuck. Fucking fucking _fucking fuck._

“You can’t—can’t do this.” 

And suddenly Dean’s up in his face, rattlesnake-fast, hand locked around his jaw and shaking him. 

“Don’t you fucking tell me what I _can’t do,_ hear me? That _thing_ over there is _everything that’s wrong with the world_ and you are going to fucking _see and understand,_ and then you’re going to _get me my brother back._ You hear me?” 

Victor snarls but can’t force any coherent words out through the iron grip on his face. 

When Dean releases him he spits, “That _thing_ over there is a human being, goddammit.” 

Dean draws a sharp breath through clenched teeth. He gets to his feet fluidly and without a word leaves the room. 

He’s gone for a while. 

When he comes back he’s holding a slim, two-foot piece of wood in one hand. It looks like it was broken off of a chair. He taps it idly against the side of his leg.

“You’re gonna shut up now,” Dean says. 

++

The pain comes and goes in waves, as does Dean’s face, and the sound of the woman’s cries. She’s not dead, and Dean barely lays a hand on her, as far as Victor can tell—the noises she makes are mostly cries of fear. Finally in what seems like exasperation, Winchester crams a handful of cloth in her mouth and ties another strip across the lower half of her face. 

His face swims into view in front of Victor, and he says, “Open up,” cheerfully, before he subjects Victor to the same treatment. The cloth tastes of sweat and grit. 

“It’s gonna be okay,” Dean says soothingly. “This is for your own good.” 

Victor’s body throbs. He’s pretty sure he’s got a couple fractured ribs. His knee screams at him whenever he shifts his leg slightly—probably dislocated. The only part of him Winchester left mostly unharmed is his hands. The irony isn’t lost on Vic. 

“You look like shit,” Winchester grumbles, and without warning he hurls water in Victor’s face. “Look alive, come on. This is serious.” 

Victor growls, as much as he can through his dry, sticky throat. Winchester shrugs. 

A few feet away the woman is sprawled unconscious again. Her hair is matted and there’s a roach crawling up one leg. Her arms are bound together and attached to the tap. Her head has lolled onto her arm in such a way that her face is mostly hidden by her hair. 

Winchester leaves the room. He’s gone for a while; Victor doesn’t know how long. 

He breathes through the pain in his body and studies the woman. Tries to memorize what he can see of her. Her skin is pallid, her arms bare and dusted with fine hair. She’s seems middle aged, average height and build, vaguely dirty blonde. She could be anyone, really. 

That’s the worst thing about the Winchesters. There’s no pattern in the way they target victims. It’s always seemed completely haphazard. 

Winchester comes and goes. Victor has the sense of pulsing time, of light fading in and out, though the hideous electric glare never abates. But there’s a moment when the woman starts to come around and Winchester seems to materialize at her side, and with almost delicate care injects something into the side of her neck. 

Victor’s having trouble breathing. It’s been longer than a day. There are more roaches on the wall. The blue tiles dilate, the mold spreads. He blinks to clear his eyes and the walls settle back to something normal, but out of the corners of his eyes he sees…things. Moving. 

Maybe the walls are breathing. 

Maybe he’s in the belly of a monster. 

++

Dean appears with that Cheshire Cat grin painted across his face, gross and unnatural. His eyes are flat and bright. He’s holding a knife loosely in one hand and it’s sharp and clean in the way nothing else in the room is. He laughs softly at the state Victor’s in. 

“Hey, it’s just about showtime. Listen. Listen. It’s gonna be okay. But you have to see this. You have to understand. Okay. Just, listen. Let me tell you this.” 

He settles on the edge of the tub and lays a proprietary hand on the side of the unconscious woman’s head. Tilts it casually so it’s resting at an awkward angle against his thigh, her hair spilling down. He runs his fingers idly up and down the side of her face, her bare throat. In his other hand, the knife glints. 

Vic’s fingers ache to wrap around his throat. 

“I didn’t believe either,” Dean says, calmly, voice dropping into the silence of a room in which two of the three inhabitant are gagged. “For a long time, I just…went along. Dad would go on all the time about it, about monsters and demons and shit. And I just…well I wasn’t really paying much attention. Mostly I was just making sure Sammy got fed. I mean Dad had bigger problems to worry about, right? 

“So I guess I was maybe…I dunno. I wasn’t in school right then, I know that. But I was still a kid. It was…summer, maybe? I don’t remember.” He shakes his head, flicks his thumb against the woman’s cheek. “And Dad was hunting something. I don’t know what it was—I still don’t know. Maybe a demon.” 

His eyes have lost a little of their focus, the ways Sam’s had, in that interview room with the psychiatrist that seems so far away. 

“Sam did something, he got in trouble…don’t really remember what it was for. He was just a kid, he didn’t know better. He lost a shoe or something stupid. And Dad was…he said he didn’t have time, that if we couldn’t take it seriously we were just in the way….He.” Dean breaks off, blinking. His fingers curl slightly, nails digging into the woman’s cheek. 

“But it wasn’t Sammy’s fault. It was…it was mine. I was supposed to be looking after him. So. Dad got the…the little ropes. The ones for me. And put me in the bathroom. And. He went out to find the demon.” 

Victor doesn’t care. He _doesn’t fucking care._ He’s going to tear the sink out of the wall, he’s going to smash Winchester’s head into the floor until it cracks like an egg and his brains come spilling out. 

“He found the demon though. A few days later. 

“I remember I was just thirsty. And Sam cried. And cried. But he wasn’t allowed in and I…I couldn’t do anything. And then Dad came home.” 

Shit, this is another Winchester telling Vic something secret. Something they’ve never told another living soul. His fucking luck. Victor Henriksen: confessor to psycho serial killers. 

“I remember the sound of the door opening. And Dad walking across the floor. And the…body, being dragged. 

“He opened the door and the smell of blood was…and I’d never smelled it before so I didn’t know what it _was._ He said, ‘This is _real,’_ and pulled the whole body into the room, and left it there. 

“It didn’t have a head, though. Just…the neck on down.” He draws a delicate line across the woman’s throat. Vic’s skin crawls. 

“I was so thirsty. And tired. And trying not to pee but God, I just….” He shuts his eyes. “I didn’t want another whooping. But. 

“I was there a long time. And it was hot and the body started to…kind of melt. I think there were flies. There were these,” he waves a hand around his face, “These black spots. And it smelled _real bad._ Like, hurt my head bad. I think I threw up. I don’t know. I don’t remember. But there was…it was in my mouth. A taste. And.” 

He falls silent for a while. His thumb makes idle circles over the rough cloth of the woman’s gag. 

“And the body got like, swollen. And. Kept melting. And then the room was getting bigger. Or smaller. It was moving. It was…something was wrong. There were bugs. Flies maybe. Other things. Crawling. On it. On me. And I couldn’t…so they got in my nose, my mouth. Sometimes on my eyes. And I thought…maybe I was dead, too. I wanted to be, so I wouldn’t be thirsty anymore. And my arms wouldn’t hurt. And Daddy wouldn’t come through the door and whoop my ass. 

“But then the body just kept getting bigger. And the room kept…bigger and…and smaller—it, I don’t know. And they were moving, the walls were, or maybe it was just the bugs and the…the slime from the body running across the floor in a puddle like…well. Like that.” He waves a hand vaguely at the sticky floor. 

“And after a long time that body, that… _thing,_ it wasn’t a body anymore. It…was a hole.” 

Victor shuts his eyes. 

“It was a hole into…I don’t know. Somewhere else. Somewhere awful. It just opened up and I saw…I mean I _saw_ it. I saw the…the _nothing._ The,” his hands open and shut, clawing lightly at the woman’s face, shifting the knife around as he tries to grasp something he has no words for, has never had words for, “It was just this huge hole torn out of the wall, out of the room, out of _everything,_ and I _saw,_ I really really _saw,_ and then, and then.” 

He breaks off, looks away, toward the corner, shakes his head awkwardly, eyes fixed and distant, the whole of the gesture sick and unnatural. 

“ _It talked to me._ The hole the…the _thing_ in the room with…with me. It talked. Its voice was.” He swallows. “It’s voice. I don’t know. I wasn’t like anything. It was…” he shut his eyes. “It was _evil._ I knew it. I felt it. It made me sick—I threw up again. Just the sound of it. Hurt me. Like…fingers in your stomach. And it said. It told me.” 

He draws a deep breath. 

“It told me everything. It told me the truth. That, that evil is real. That it wants to eat me. Eat us. Alive. Screaming. That the things come crawling out of the hole into the world, like flies and w-worms crawling out of dead bodies, like guts falling out. Like having someone _reach inside you_ and hurt you, hurt you so bad. 

“It kept talking and talking. It talked all day and night. I asked it to stop. I cried, I think, maybe. I screamed for Daddy, for Sammy. Sammy cried. Nobody came. Nobody came. It just kept…telling me everything. And it just got bigger. And bigger. And.” 

He looks up then, toward the ceiling. His hand clenches spasmodically around the knife. 

“And then Dad came and opened the door and burned it up.” 

He goes on staring up at the ceiling and he’s holding the knife very tightly in one hand. 

He stays locked in that position, rigid, for a long time. 

Finally, in the quietest most childlike voice Victor’s ever heard, he says, “You have to see it too.” 

He lowers his eyes and his face is beatific, awash in the ecstatic joy of a salvation Victor wants no part of. Dean looks down and lowers himself off the side of the bathtub. He props the woman’s body against his chest, so her head rests back on his shoulder, an awful parody of intimacy ruined by her bound arms and legs. Winchester forces her head back further, baring her throat. 

Victor tries to shout, but all that comes out of his throat is an anguished crackling groan. 

_Nobody came. Nobody came._

“It’s okay,” Dean says, laying the knife against the bare clean skin of her throat. “You’ll understand soon. And then you’ll help me get Sammy back.” 

He pushes the knife against her skin. Bright redness wells up slowly and traces a line down, down down. 

And with a noise like thunder the whole world explodes. The door flies off its hinges. Blue-clad bodies flood into the room. Reidy grabs Dean Winchester and yanks him backward so hard his head cracks against the doorjamb and he screams incoherently, and then there are words and the words are, “No no no please no, please no _Sam, Sammy_ no please, _please.”_

And someone is in Victor’s face and yanking the gag off and there’s a lot of yelling and light and noise and Reidy is shouting, “Vic! Vic can you hear me?” and shining a light in his face and fuck this very much, Victor’s just about goddamn had enough. 

So he goes away. 

Just for a little while. 

++

Epilogue

++

Victor does go back to the gym, after it’s all over. After his ribs heal, after his body knits back together. After the painkiller regimen ends, after the trials, and re-trials, after the media circus and threats of book deals—after Victor finds out that someone’s making a _goddamn movie_ about the Winchester family, what the everloving fuck—Vic goes back to the gym. 

He spends a lot of time on the treadmill, a lot of time running. He chats with a few people, meets a girl, goes on a couple dates. In the end though he’s just got too much baggage, some of it recently acquired thanks to nearly three days locked in a room without food or water with a famous psychotic serial killer. 

Seven months after the last trial, when the media has finally, _finally_ started to turn its attention elsewhere, Victor goes to visit the Winchesters. 

They’re housed separately. Sam’s in a maximum security facility a thousand miles from his brother, and he’s supposed to be getting treatment. When Victor walks through the door Sam basically tries to claw through the partition to get at him, and has to be dragged away spitting and literally foaming at the mouth, the purest incarnation of incandescent rage Henriksen has ever had the misfortune to encounter in his life. 

He visits Dean’s new home a few weeks later, and they tell him he can’t be seen, by anyone. That he’s in solitary, that he’s going to stay in solitary, probably for years. 

_Nobody came._

Nobody came.

He catches an orderly as the man is heading to his car, and with the help of Benjamin manages to get a little bit of news on the eldest Winchester’s current activities—such as they are. 

“He just sits there, in the corner of his room,” the big pink-faced man says, rolling his shoulders and inhaling through his nose, as if reveling in the freedom that his charges will never experience again. “He sits all day and all night. I don’t know if he sleeps. He’s practically catatonic. They’re afraid to move him in case it’s an act but…we have to spoon feed him. Put him on a drip a couple times.” 

Vic nods. He doesn’t know what he’d expected, but this sounds about right. 

“He just stares up at the ceiling all day,” the man goes on. He shoves his hands into his pockets. “He just stares and stares and stares.” 

He pauses, then adds in nearly a whisper, “It’s like he’s waiting for somebody to come, and let him out.” 

Victor nods his thanks, and fixes his eyes on the ground on the way back to his own car. 

When he finally makes it back home, sixteen hours later, he opens up all the windows and lets the clean air blow through.

—

The End

—

_____________________

Note: It took several years to get around to writing part 2. Mostly it was written due to the sudden idea of the centerpiece of the fic, which is that image of Dean, about 8 or 10, locked in a room with a rotting corpse and basically losing his mind. 

I didn’t write it to somehow say that we should feel pity or sympathy for mass murderers or serial killers. The scene was just too strong in my mind to pass up, and it fit the parallel for part 1 too well. I’d always intended part 2 to be a mirror of part one, with Victor’s situation reversed. 

Thanks for reading, and for waiting so patiently for part 2. Much love. 


End file.
